Martyr
by Magery
Summary: "We did it, Gin. We did it," Harry said, and only then did Ginny start to weep, tears rolling down her face as she sobbed, her whole body shaking with a grief as vast and as ancient as the stars.


Every book has a beginning, every tale has its end. Legends are born and heroes die, myths perpetuate throughout the shrouded annals of history and the greatest stories in the world go untold. And sometimes, when the stars align and fates collide and the butterfly flaps its wings, all of these things can happen in a single, solitary moment.

But even that moment has a beginning, and it began when the doors to the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry flew open in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable lunch. Wizards, witches, children and adults turned as one to face them, some gasping at what they saw. For in walked—if walked could accurately describe the half-limp, half-stumble that was his broken, battered body's attempt at movement—Harry Potter, burnt and bloodied, red lines scattered across his body weeping crimson droplets like grieving lovers onto the stone floor below.

His eyes, pale and haunted, did not survey the room, nor the hundred-odd wands pointed at him as the sixth and seventh-years stood as one alongside all of their professors. That is, almost as one. For his gaze was fixed on Ginny Weasley, sitting in solitude on the very end of the Gryffindor table; she remained in her seat, eyes wide, something that looked like horrified despair dawning on her face like a mockery of sunrise.

The man universally reviled as a traitor staggered towards her; only the obvious fact of his injury kept it from resembling the walk of a drunkard as the rest of the hall watched on in silence. Many wondered why they hadn't already cursed him into oblivion, but though their wands remained up not a single spell was cast.

Perhaps it was the atmosphere that kept them from attacking, the heavy, heady sense of importance, like something had happened beyond their comprehension and Harry was merely the messenger. Perhaps it was the fact those with more experience of war than others knew what dying looked like. Or, perhaps, it was simply the look on the lone Weasley's face, the sort of look some of them knew all too well. Equal parts rage and denial, shock and sadness, the sort of look you get when somebody you love is dying and there is _nothing_ you can do about it.

She stood up, moving almost hesitantly towards Harry, like the very act of reaching him would make him painfully real, that if she kept her distance from him the inevitability of his death would keep its distance too.

But still they approached one another, one with the grace of a queen in mourning and the other with a shuddering urgency some recognized as that of a man with one last, vital mission. He stumbled into her arms and she caught him, barely holding on but holding on all the same. They slowly sunk to the floor, locked in an embrace as tender as it was tragic, and still the hall was silent.

Then he spoke in a harsh rasp, in a coarse whisper that yet somehow carried itself across the hall; had anyone been watching the professor's table, they still would not have noticed the spell being cast.

"We did it, Gin. We did it," Harry said, and only then did Ginny start to weep, tears rolling down her face as she sobbed, her whole body shaking with a grief as vast and as ancient as the stars. There was a pause, one that stretched out to an impossible distance and yet one that ended almost as soon as it began, and then he spoke again.

"It," he falters, "it hurts. I didn't think it would hurt this much." His voice sounded like sorrow, and even some of the most battle-hardened in the hall feel a slight sympathy for a man they have all decried as a traitor, as a betrayer beyond even Peter Pettigrew. For it is one thing to wish a man dead, and another to watch him slowly slip away before your very eyes.

"I know, baby, I know." If his voice sounded like sorrow, hers sounded like despair.

"Gin?" he murmurs in a pale mockery of a lover's last words before they fall asleep, "I love you."

Her only response is to hold him ever tighter, for she knows she cannot respond in kind. He is already gone.

Those in the hall know they should be happy that he is dead, but for some reason they feel a sense of titanic loss, like there is something _wrong_ with the picture in front of them. As if this is not what the world should be like. And so, the silence is subtly shifted from one of shock into the quiet reverence of a funeral.

It stretches out, one second into two, two seconds into four, until it is finally shattered by Severus Snape.

He sits at the Professor's Table, laughing brokenly; it is the laughter of a man who has reached the end of his sanity, who has finally heard the punch-line to a joke gone on so long he cannot even remember how it started, only that he must laugh because it is finally over. The hall turns as one to study him—or as one save for Ginny Weasley, who is ignoring the world around her because maybe if she refuses to accept his death then it won't be true, because maybe if she believes it shouldn't have ended like _this_ then maybe somehow, somewhere, it _won't_—until his laughter slowly dies away like the memory of last night's dreams.

It is only then that the Patronii appear, a hundred animals glowing like burnished silver; they arrange themselves before Dumbledore, before Minerva McGonagall, before teachers and students, filling the hall with the burning intensity of joy so profound it has taken physical form. Those present are too caught in the spectacle to wonder why such happiness feels so very _wrong_.

They speak, not as one but repeating the same message, four words that echo out with the force of an exploding star.

"Lord Voldemort is dead."

For a moment, the Hall is filled with cheers and whoops of joy, of celebratory kisses and embraces, but then there is a noise like a cracking whip, like miniaturized thunder, and Severus Snape stands amidst the silence. Next to him, the face of Albus Dumbledore slowly crumples into pained despair; the aged wizard already knows what the Potion Master will say next, but far more importantly, and oh so tragically, he already knows what the answer is, too.

"Would you like to know who killed him?" the Slytherin asks, voice as soft as velvet, if velvet could ever carry such an undertone of unrestrained anguish and uncontrolled rage.

Nobody answers for a moment, and then Snape simply gestures, hand tracing a path as inexorable as an avalanche, pointing to a truth as immutable as the heavens.

He is pointing at the broken body of Harry Potter, reviled traitor, right hand of Voldemort and the epitome of what it takes to be a Death Eater. And for the first time they notice there is no Dark Mark on the raw, battered flesh of his left forearm.


End file.
